Fair Coin by E.C. Myers is the first book in a YA science fiction series. The hero, Ephraim Scott, lives in Summerside, New York. One day he comes home from school to discover that his alcoholic mother has overdosed on pills. She did this because she was told Ephraim was killed in an accident. This is not a hoax or a mistake; when Ephraim takes his mother to the hospital he finds out that the boy in the morgue has ID and a library card in Ephraim’s name.
December 5th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | E.C. Myers | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
At its best, Heroic Fantasy can inspire and enliven. By nature, the subgenre is less concerned with realism than it is with depicting nobility, honor, and genuine integrity. In so doing, it shows us a world that reflects the better portions of our own, the world as it should be rather than as it is. At its worst, however, Heroic Fantasy is notorious for shallow characterization, mindless violence, and sententious, often hypocritical, pontificating to justify all that mindless violence so our valiant warriors can get back to massacring villages with rumps firmly planted on high horses.
December 5th, 2012. Tim Scheidler and Greg Hersom | David Gemmell | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Dave Freer’s YA novel The Steam Mole is a rollicking good time. This book picks up almost immediately after Cuttlefish. Tim Barnabas and Clara Calland are now in Westralia, a free nation on the Australian continent. Clara and her scientist mother Mary have sought asylum from the dreaded coal-driven British Empire, alive and well in 1953 in this world, but Tim and the rest of the submarine’s crew are stranded while the Cuttlefish is being repaired.
December 4th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Dave Freer | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Because he was such a spectacular fighter pilot during WWIII, Captain Eric Weston has been given command of the new spaceship Odyssey which is making her maiden voyage beyond the galaxy, to boldly go where no man has gone before. What Weston and his crew find out there is quite a surprise: a small spacecraft emitting a distress signal and containing a nearly dead human woman named Mia.
When they take Mia back to their ship, revive her and learn her language,
December 4th, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2 | Evan Currie | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four edited by Ellen Datlow
Anything Ellen Datlow edits automatically finds a place on my list of books to read. For many years, this included the excellent anthology series The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, which Datlow coedited with Terri Windling. When that series disappeared, much to the dismay of fans of short fiction everywhere, Datlow undertook to publish The Year’s Best Horror, which has been published by the terrific smaller press,
December 3rd, 2012. Terry Weyna´s rating: 5 | A.C. Wise, Ellen Datlow, Glen Hirshberg, John Langan, Laird Barron, Margo Lanagan, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Terri Windling | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
Stephen King’s The Gunslinger is a post-apocalyptic Western-fantasy hybrid about the gunslinger Roland Deschain and his pursuit of the man in black across a desert.
At first glance, the Western plays the largest role in The Gunslinger. Roland carries two heavy six shooters with sandalwood handles, and he can fire them both with deadly accuracy. He wears a duster, leads a pack mule when we first meet him, and is chasing his quarry across a seemingly endless desert.
December 3rd, 2012. Ryan Skardal and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Stephen King | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…